A Reckoning

Republican lawmakers have declared that President Barack Obama’s new health-care law will literally bankrupt the nation, driving small businesses into ruin and millions of Americans into penury. And yet despite its continuing economic woes, the United States remains the richest nation in the world, with an annual GDP (currently in the range of $15 trillion) three times greater than the world’s next largest economies, China and Japan.

How is it, then, that the world’s most prosperous...

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About the Author

Ronald E. Osborn is an adjunct professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Anarchy and Apocalypse: Essays on Faith, Violence and Theodicy (Cascade Books), and Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (IVP Academic).